A Sulzberger Subsidy?

June 20, 2000

http://www.smartertimes.com/100/a-sulzberger-subsidy

So it looks as though the city is about to cave in to The New York Times Company's demands for a tax break to help subsidize the erection of a new 40-story headquarters tower for the newspaper near Times Square. Buried on page B3 of the New York editions of today's Times is the news that the newspaper "is expected to sign an agreement this week" under which the city "is expected to provide a series of tax breaks." The Times had reported on February 19 that it was threatening to move hundreds of jobs to Edison, N.J. "unless it obtained tax breaks." There's no information in today's story about the size of the tax breaks, but the February story said the Times "told city officials that it was willing to make annual payments of about one-third of the city's current property tax rate." Well, it's nice to see that our friends on W. 43rd St. are finally coming over to the view that the tax burden on New Yorkers is too high, joining the consensus that includes a broad range of politicians, from Mayor Giuliani to City Council Speaker Peter Vallone. In our view, though, it's better to spread any tax cuts around equitably to the individual taxpayers who need them most. If any ordinary taxpayer showed up at the IRS on April 15 and announced he was "willing" to pay only a third of the taxes he owed, he'd be laughed out of the office. Why should the Sulzbergers be treated any differently? Tax breaks doled out on a per-project basis to big business amount to corporate welfare. Of those in need of welfare, The Times Company and its controlling family, the Sulzbergers, would have to be pretty low on anybody's list. The Times Company last year posted operating profits of $586.7 million. Last year's authorized biography of the Sulzbergers, "The Trust," detailed the family's extravagant lifestyle -- at barbecues on the family's 277-acre Connecticut estate, a manservant would stand at attention holding the hamburger patties on a silver platter as Arthur Ochs Sulzberger prepared to place them on the grill. City Hall should see the proposed Sulzberger subsidy for what it is. The best words to describe it are the ones that the Times's own editorial used a few months ago to dismiss the flat tax. It called it "a bald attempt to give the most affluent Americans a free ride."

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Special Interests: Here's a gem from a brief account in today's national section reporting on the end of the political partnership between Patrick Buchanan and Lenora Fulani: "Still, their collaboration underscored certain shared views, including opposition to big government and special interests." Huh? Pat Buchanan, who wants to outlaw abortion, to impose protectionist tariffs on imported goods and to build a fence to keep Mexican immigrants out of America, is against big government? And Ms. Fulani, who, the previous paragraph tells us, helped Mr. Buchanan expand the Reform Party's base to include "blacks, Hispanics, gays, even Communists," is against special interests? For that matter, is there any politician who says he is for special interests? What the reporter is trying to say is that Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Fulani have both offended Jewish groups with criticism of Israel. But the article doesn't make any mention of Jews or anti-Semitism. It just assumes when readers see "special interests" they'll think of Jews and not "blacks, Hispanics, gays, even Communists," who after all are, in Timespeak, not "special interests" but "minorities."

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